Dense networks are currently emerging in a variety of environments including urban settings. For example, mobile data demand has been increasing in light of the increase in the number of users with mobile devices. In particular, currently, there has been an increase in traffic volume, number of transactions, and number of mobile devices. Accordingly, higher data rates with improved quality of service as well as low costs may be needed. Unfortunately, current cellular networks lend to be already overloaded and may not be able to meet the data demands. As such, operators may implement dense networks to handle the increase in demand by deploying femtocells, small cells, microcells, and/or the like to offload traffic from a core or macro network. In examples, these offloading techniques may be integrated into the mobile operator's managed network, rather than replacing the network. Further, such a dense network deployment may enable diverting a large amount of traffic away from the congested and expensive macro network (e.g., the core network).
Session continuity support in the dense network context may be needed, for example, without burdening the mobile core network. Distributed mobility management (DMM) may be used for offloading traffic from the core network. For example, mobility management may be distributed outside of the core network, ensuring the usage of the most efficient data path while also handling session continuity. As such, it may be beneficial to use DMM in combination with the dense networks to further offload traffic. However, currently using DMM in dense networks where there may be several DMM gateways or anchor nodes may result in an increase in handovers between the gateways. Such an increase of hand overs may result in the device of the user having to reconcile additional IP addresses established with the increased number of gateways or anchor nodes being handed over to. Further, such an increase of gateways and/or handovers thereto may result in an increase in tunnels between such gateways or anchor nodes and the device. As such, the additional gateways ur anchor nodes in a dense network that may include current DMM techniques may result in the device performing handovers frequently and, thus, degrading the performance on the network and/or for the device itself, which may lead to a poor user experience.